


Four Winters: IV

by Linden



Series: Four Winters [4]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-06
Updated: 2014-08-06
Packaged: 2018-02-12 00:43:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2089251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Linden/pseuds/Linden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wherein Dean runs into his little brother a year after Sam left for California, nachos are had, and motel beds put to good use.</p><p>Rated for pretty boys being naughty in chapter 2.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> It's been several years since I've been either to the Red Lion or the hole-in-the-wall motel (better known as Roost Lodge, where the space heaters really will try to kill you) in Vail, so apologies for any errors. (But seriously, those nachos at the Lion used to be AWESOME.
> 
> Also, this was the bitchiest of bitchy things to write, for reasons that are not clear to me, and I'm still not sure I'm wild about all of it. Any feedback, positive or negative, would be welcome!

**November 2003**

Tucked up in a cozy booth at the Red Lion, with an empty shot glass in front of him and a ridiculously overpriced Coors in hand, Dean was gonna go out on a limb and decide that Vail, Colorado was not his kind of place.

Burgers were thirteen friggin’ dollars a piece, for one thing. And people _paid_ that crazy shit for them, for another. Also, he was never gonna understand the phenomenon known as ‘ski pants.’

 But all of these things, he’d decided, were pretty much okay. Because as it turned out, folks who routinely spent thirteen bucks on a hamburger and wore clothing that rustled loudly enough to be heard _across a goddamned interstate_ also seemed to think nothing of losing ludicrous amounts of cash at pool tables, and he and John had hustled enough gas and grocery money for four or five months in the three days that they’d been here. So it’s not like he was complaining too much. And ridiculous prices aside, the Lion was a comfortable enough place to pass the time. He was waiting on a burger and a half-order of nachos from the kitchen; he had a comfortable booth and a cold beer and a classics Mets-Red Sox game on overhead; and the (hot, flirty, and clearly interested) waitress had assured him that the ‘cinnamon crumble apple crisp’ on the menu was, indeed, a close cousin to pie. Add to that the fact that, as of 12:47 this morning, a nest of ice-walkers was a pile of frost and ash and that the civilians in their ski pants could therefore once again walk unmolested through the night, and all in all he’d had worse evenings, he really had. And if he’d have been happier if his father hadn’t taken off for some mysterious business in Minnesota that afternoon, or if Sam were in the booth beside him, all long legs and snark and dimples, well—‘s not like missing either of them was _new_ , in his life experience, and he was still glad enough to be here, all the same.

He let his gaze wander around the room as it started to fill up with folks coming in off the slopes. It was different from the usual sort of comfortable dive he found himself in—it wasn’t a dive, for one, and he was willing to bet ‘clean the blood up after yourself’ was not the rule for bar fights in this place—but Dean thought he kinda liked it, even so. Nice tables, bright windows, a dart board he might try his hand at later; Sam, a pretty girl with a spill of dark hair tumbling out from beneath her cap—

Sam.

He blinked, hard, twice. For the first few months after his baby brother had left for Stanford, he’d seen the kid everywhere—out of the corner of his eye at a gas station, at the back of a diner, in the middle of a fucking _hunt_ , once, a hallucination which had damn near gotten him and John and Cormac killed. But this time Sam didn’t disappear when Dean opened his eyes again, didn’t morph into another pretty boy with shaggy hair and a sunbright smile. Sam stayed Sam, standing near the doorway, slim and stupidly tall, looking completely and utterly at home in boots and a pair of those ridiculous ski pants and a bright parka and colorful hat, a lift tag hanging from his jacket zipper, and Dean felt something hot and cold and overjoyed and terrified rip through him all at once.

_Sammy._

He was with a crowd of other kids his age, all of them clearly just in off the mountain, flush-faced and bright-eyed and chattering happily with one another as the hostess pointed them in the direction of a table for six. The pretty dark-haired girl Dean had noticed before had her hand tucked into the curve of Sam’s arm, and Sam was bending to listen to whatever it was she was saying, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. He looked good, Dean thought, numbly, as possessiveness kicked hard and painful against his ribs. (And that was stupid, _stupid_ , because Sam wasn’t his anymore—wasn’t his and maybe never had been; the kid had been clear enough about that last summer, Jesus.) He looked healthy, looked happy. Looked roughly eight hundred feet tall. Was also now staring back at him across the bar with a frozen, shocked expression on his face.

Dean raised his bottle in an ironic salute.

‘Nachos and a bleu sky burger, medium rare,’ said a pretty voice coming up from behind him, and after a long still moment Dean tore his eyes away from his pole-axed little brother to look around and find his dinner. ‘Sorry the chips got held up so long,’ his waitress said. ‘Kitchen said they’d knock five dollars off, okay?’ She slid his meal deftly onto his table, still balancing her tray with three other plates piled on; looking down at a hot iron skillet—a literal _hot iron skillet_ — of beef and salsa and sour cream piled over cheese-melted corn chips, and a burger roughly the size of his head topped with bacon and blue cheese, Dean decided that maybe Vail _was_ his kind of place, after all.  ‘You want me to grab you another beer, bright eyes?’

‘Yeah. Actually, uh, make it two. And a shot of Jager and another of whiskey, ‘f you can swing it. Thanks, sweetheart.’

The girl tossed a sweet, sassy smile over her shoulder at him as she left, which Dean scarcely noticed, because—

‘ _Dean_?’

He’d heard Sam’s voice often enough on the kid’s voicemail greeting this past year, before he'd given up on calling, but it still sent a sweet, painful shock through him all the same, tightened something in his belly. He looked up. Sam was standing maybe five feet away from his booth, eyes wide, brow furrowed, and so fucking beautiful that it hurt. Dean quirked a smile at him. ‘Heya, Sammy,’ he said, and his voice sounded almost steady. Would wonders never cease.                                                                                                   

‘What are you—’ Jesus, Sam’s eyes were as stupidly bright as Dean remembered. ‘Dean, what in the hell are you _doing_ here?’

And yeah, okay, maybe Dean had been hoping for a smile in return; hell, maybe he’d been hoping for his little brother to wrap himself around him like the clingy baby octopus he’d once been. He knocked back a slug of beer and swallowed his disappointment and hurt down with it, looked at Sam for a moment in silence. Then: ‘Hopin’ apple crisp is rich people code for pie,’ he finally replied. ‘Dad and I just wrapped up a job, man. The hell do you think I’m doin’ here?’

 ‘I . . .’ Something flickered across Sam’s face, there and gone again too quickly for Dean to catalog. ‘Wait, _Dad_ ’s here?’

‘Dad took off this morning,’ Dean said. ‘Job’s done. I’m stickin’ around for a night just to be sure of it, that’s all.’ He tipped his head back a little, bottle swinging from the fingers of his left hand, and raised an eyebrow at his brother. ‘Though if we’re tradin’ travel stories, kiddo—and hi, by the way; I'm glad to see you, too—you wanna tell me why you’re not off learnin’ shit in California, livin’ that normal life of yours and all?’ he asked. ‘Cause I am damn sure you ain’t here to hunt.’

He thought Sam might be flushing a little, but his cheeks were already bright from the cold and the wind, and so it was hard to tell. ‘We’re on break,’ he said.

‘Thought that involved spring. And, y’know, hot chicks. In Miami.’

The shadow of a painfully familiar smile, both exasperated and amused, tugged at the corner of his brother’s mouth. ‘We get a week at Thanksgiving, Dean.’  

Dean blinked. Thanksgiving. Christ, November had gone by faster than he’d thought. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Yeah. Yeah, of course. Forgot it was coming up.’ He resolutely did not think about the last Thanksgiving he’d spent with his brother, two years past, in a rundown motel in northern Michigan; fresh off a nasty hunt, neither one of them had been up for much more than a bucket meal and some mac and cheese from KFC, but they’d been together, and Sam had spent a lazy, snowy afternoon putting his mouth and breath and hands on every inch of Dean’s bare skin. ‘So.’ He cleared his throat. He wasn’t thinking about it. He _was not_. ‘Holiday road trip, huh?’ He looked around the bar. ‘They gonna do turkey here or somethin’?’

‘I—maybe? I don’t know.’ Sam went to push a hand through his hair, came up against his hat, tugged it irritably off, stuffed it in one pocket. His hair was longer than Dean remembered it, still looked every bit as soft. Dean tightened a hand around his beer against the impulse to touch. ‘Zach and Becca’s parents—’

Who in the hell were _Zach_ and _Becca_?

‘—have a house up here. A bunch of us are having dinner there on Thursday.’

‘Huh,’ he said. And: ‘Sweet,’ he offered, though his stomach felt hollow, and his chest sort of ached. Ski pants, college friends, holiday dinners where Dean was willing to bet folding money that the pie wasn’t coming from Walmart—Jesus, Sammy was five feet and a fucking universe away from him.

‘You and Dad—you heading to Bobby’s?’ Sam asked after a moment, hesitantly.

Dean shook his head. ‘Nah. Bobby’s out in Oregon for a few weeks—got a case with Allie, I think. And Dad’s got somethin’ up in Minnesota this week, anyway.’

‘The hell’s in Minnesota?’

‘A shitload of snow and the ghost of Paul Bunyan, Sam. I got no idea. But it’s nothin’ Dad needed me for, so I’m, you know.’ He gestured. ‘Whatever. Stockpilin’ cash, the past few days, ‘cause let me tell you, the people in this town are seriously crap at pool.’

Sam’s mouth quirked, reluctantly. ‘You think everyone’s seriously crap at pool.’

Dean shrugged. ‘Yeah, well. Most people are.’

Sam said nothing in reply, though he didn’t move away. A waiter eased past carrying another skillet of nachos and a tray of drinks; somewhere near the bar, a glass shattered and a table exploded in raucous laughter. Dean nodded at the other side of the booth. ‘You wanna sit, or are you gonna stand there lookin’ like Lurch all night?’

‘I, uh—’ Sam glanced over toward where his friends were a bright, chattering knot at their table. ‘Dean—’

‘Yeah, no, sorry,’ he said. He waved him off. ‘I shouldn’t—go do whatever it is you’re doin’, Sammy. There’s—’

‘No, just . . .’ Sighing, he pushed a hand through his hair. ‘Just give me a minute. Don’t . . . don’t go anywhere, all right?’ he said, and was gone a heartbeat later, slipping easily through the thickening crowd. Dean watched him go. The kid still moved like a hunter. It might have been more than a year since Sam had packed a salt round or put some evil son of a bitch in the ground, and he might have sauntered into Vail without realizing there was a _nest of icewalkers_ preying on the _entire goddamn town_ (and don’t think Dean wasn’t going to have words with him about that; just because the kid had decided to ignore all the creeping evil in the dark didn’t mean it wasn’t fucking _out_ there anymore, for Chrissakes) but he moved like a hunter all the same, like the baby brother Dean remembered, all coiled grace and the leashed, quiet promise of violence, and that meant . . . well, Dean didn’t know what the hell that meant, really, but it made him feel a little better, all the same.

Sighing, he tried a nacho, and _holy shit._

‘Dean, Jesus Christ,’ Sam said, a couple of minutes later, as he slid in to the other side of the booth. Dean grinned at him around a mouthful of chips and cheddar.

‘These are,’ he declared, swallowing, ‘the best friggin’ nachos I have ever eaten, man. Seriously. People here need to make a sign.’

‘Yeah, I’m sure they’ll get right on that.’ Sam shrugged out of his parka. He had on a snug long-sleeved crewneck beneath, soft and waffled and grey; Dean looked away from him before he did something stupid like touch it just to feel the material slide against his brother’s skin. He pushed both the plate and skillet in Sam’s general direction instead (‘Can’t eat all of this by myself, Sammy’), and started in on half his burger, while Sam sat studying his own hands and snuck occasional glances across the table at him.

The kid had always sucked at subtle.

‘Ask you something?’ Dean said after a minute, into the awkward, fragile quiet between them.

Sam drew a careful breath. ‘Dean—’

‘No, hey, I’m curious. Important question.’ He propped his elbows up on the table, burger still in his hands, looked at his brother for a long moment. ‘Since when do you friggin’ _ski,_ man?’

Sam blinked at him, startled, and then his mouth twitched twice before he gave up and smiled—really smiled, sunlight and dimples and warm hazel-blue eyes, and Dean felt it in his gut, the sudden pull of everything in the world he loved and wanted and had been missing like a fucking limb since he’d last seen his little brother in the wilds of northern Iowa. ‘Shut up,’ Sam said, and Dean was pretty sure the kid was two seconds from picking up a French fry to throw at his head.

‘You’re wearin’ ski pants, Sammy,’ he pointed out. ‘You have a _parka_. Seriously. What the everlovin’ fuck.’ He eyed him again for a minute in silence. His brother had already been a little taller than he was when he’d gone storming off to Stanford, but by now he had to have a good three or four inches of lanky, bony height on him, and it was the most unsettling thing _on the_ _planet_ , thank you very much. ‘And you’re the size of a freakin’ pine tree, you realize that,’ he added, and Sam smiled again, ducking his stupidly (adorably) shaggy head a little, dark hair falling back forward into his eyes. Dean knocked back his shot of whiskey when the waitress brought it, slid one of the beers and the Jager over to his brother; a moment later Sam snuck a hand out to steal one of Dean’s fries, then another, tried a nacho. Tried a couple more. At which point Dean kicked him repeatedly in the ankle until he picked up the other half of the burger and drank off his Jager and started in on his beer, and the room filled up bright and noisy all around them.

They’d polished off the burger and were still working on the nachos when Dean felt Sam’s knee bump gently against his beneath the table and stay there. Neither one of them moved away.

***

It was thirty minutes, the rest of the nachos, an argument over jalapenos, and two servings of apple crisp later when the live music started, and to Dean’s very great surprise it did not entirely suck. After the second song he shifted over to Sam’s side of the booth so that he could see the guitarist, stretched one arm out over the seat back behind his brother, casual and loose. Sat nursing another beer and drumming the fingers of his left hand on the table top to the beat of the songs he knew, and tried his best to ignore the way his cock thickened a little in his jeans every time he felt Sam’s leg shift against his beneath their table. He didn’t have much luck. Sam was warm and close and every breath Dean pulled in was rich with the scent of his soap and skin, and it made it easy, so fucking easy, to forget that this wasn’t any one of the thousand nights the two of them had spent unwinding after a hunt together in a bar, that it wasn’t going to end the way those nights always had: in a bathroom stall, in an alley out back, in the backseat of the Impala; sometimes, if their father were very absolutely definitely already three towns over chasing down a new lead, in their motel room, where Dean could stretch his baby brother out, really take his time with him. He wanted to shift his arm to wrap it around Sam’s slim shoulders; wanted to tuck him into his side where he belonged, bury his own nose and mouth in the kid’s ridiculously floppy hair and breathe him in. He tipped his head back against the seat back instead, closed his eyes for a minute against the ache of memory.

The music shifted to something blues-y, heavy on the guitar and molasses-slow. Dean kept his eyes closed, let the slow heavy beat of it get into his blood. After a minute he felt the seat shift beneath him as Sam moved a little, felt the weight of his little brother’s gaze on him, as tangible as a touch. He didn’t open his eyes. Resolutely did not think of the crap motel room waiting for him three miles down the road, or how much he wanted his little brother beneath him in one of its beds. He had him here. Fourteen months of silence and space, and he was _here_ , his little brother was right here, safe and whole and healthy, and that was enough. He would make it be enough.

'Dean,' Sam said, very softly.

'Mmm.'

Familiar fingers, calloused and warm, settled sudden and gentle against his cheek, and Dean felt his heart slam against his ribcage at the same time as his eyes flew open. Sam was watching him, steadily, gaze dark and unreadable in the dim light. He swallowed, once, visibly, then stroked along Dean’s cheekbone, his jaw; traced the outline of his mouth with a thumb. Let his fingers trail down the long line of Dean’s neck to spread against his chest. Somewhere in there, Dean was fairly certain both of them stopped breathing.

He barely felt the first kiss Sam pressed against the side of his throat, no more than a hesitant, butterfly brush of chapped lips against skin, but it still lit up every nerve ending in his body like a goddamned wildfire, and the flush of heat that washed over him from head to heels left him a little dizzy from the rush. Swallowing, he tipped his head back farther against the back of the booth; Sam kissed him again, open-mouthed this time, tongue and teeth against his pulse point, sucking gently as Dean picked his hand up off the seat back to card through the silky mess of his little brother’s hair, blunt nails scratching at his scalp, careful and deliberate and slow. He let his hand drift down to rub at the back of his brother’s bare neck, rubbed a thumb and forefinger along the pressure points on either side of the top of his spine, and Sam made a soft, soft sound, involuntary and sweet. Neither of them spoke. It was dark in the bar now, and crowded, and folks were focused on their drinks and their friends and the music; half-hidden as Sam and Dean were in the dim corner booth, no one paid them any mind. Sam’s mouth was warm and wet and lazy, and as he worked his way slowly, so slowly, up the side of Dean’s throat and over the stubbled edge of his jaw, Dean wondered, briefly, if he himself were actually lying dead in a ditch somewhere, the Impala wrapped around a tree, because this was—Sam was—

Sam’s long fingers caught him carefully beneath the chin and turned his head, just a little, and Dean caught his little brother’s mouth with his. This kiss was gentle, almost chaste, and Dean let his hand slide up from the kid’s neck into his hair again, twining warm and tight. After a minute Sam pulled back, just a little, breath coming light and quick. Dean looked at his little brother for a long moment in silence, and then Sam made another soft sound in his throat and leaned in again, shifting to get closer, his hand dropping from Dean’s face to wrap around his amulet and tug him in as Sam nipped gently on his lower lip and slipped his tongue, warm and welcome and familiar, into Dean’s mouth. Dean decided he was never going to admit to the noise he made at the feel of it.

He lost a little time, kissing Sam in the warm crowded dark. He was aware, dimly, that there was still music and laughing and talking and shouting and the sound of the TVs all around them, but none of it seemed _real_ , not with Sam’s mouth on his and Sam's other hand now sliding warm up his thigh, not with the press of his brother’s body all along his side. He wanted to get him closer, wanted to get his arms around him, couldn’t because of the fucking _table_ in the way, brought his free hand up to cradle his jaw instead, thumb rubbing gently back and forth over his cheekbone.

By the time the kid pulled reluctantly away to breathe, Dean was lightheaded and more than half-hard in his jeans, and he felt _warm_ inside, like he hadn’t for more than a year. Sam dropped his forehead against Dean’s shoulder, didn’t let go of his amulet. He was shaking, slightly, breath quick and uneven.

‘This isn’t,’ Sam said, voice soft and as unsteady as his breath. ‘I’m not,’ and if he couldn’t seem to find more words than that, Dean still understood him, all the same.

This wasn’t gonna change anything. Sam wouldn’t be coming to his senses and climbing into the car with him in the morning; he’d be _leaving_ in the morning, for a turkey dinner and California and a white-picket-fence life where there was no room for salt rounds, no room for holy water, no room for Dean.

There was a night on offer here, one night, nothing more.

Dean pressed a kiss to Sam’s scalp, kept his mouth buried in Sam’s hair for a long moment. His chest felt as light as helium, as fragile as glass.

‘Motel’s not far,’ he said, softly, and Sam followed him outside.


	2. Two

It was starting to snow by the time they got to the motel, a hole-in-the-wall off of I-70 that was dirt-cheap by local standards but still three times what Dean was used to paying for a damn room. The heat was out, the beds were hard, and Dean had given it even odds a day ago that the rattling deathtrap of a space heater the management had brought by would burn the motel down before morning--and at the moment it would have been physically impossible for him to have cared less about any of it, because he had Sam pushed up against the door with snow in his hair, his brother's body a long line of heat against his. He got them into the room and kicked the door shut behind them without ever taking his mouth off of his little brother's, both of them already tugging at their clothes. Sam slid one of his hands between them to work at the buttons of Dean’s jeans, Dean rucked up the back of his brother’s shirt to get at the smooth skin beneath it, and it was maybe thirty seconds before the two of them tumbled naked into bed together, one of their tee shirts hanging off the lamp and the sheets twisting up around them as they rolled. And yeah, it had been more than a year since Dean had had this, and his little brother was taller and heavier and stronger than he remembered, but he was also still slim and sweet and _Sam_ , still his Sam, still ticklish along his right ribs with a sweet spot just above his left hip, still inclined to laugh and catch his breath at once when Dean bit at his collarbone; and Dean lost himself for a long moment grinding down helplessly into the cradle of his slim hips, Sam rocking up to meet him, neither of them with breath enough to kiss properly, lips and tongues just sliding together warm and wet.

Dean was a breath away from coming by the time he forced himself to pull away and yank the nightstand drawer open to rummage through it. He grabbed the lube, spilled it over his shaking fingers, leaving them shiny and wet. Sam was already flushed, nipples pebbled hard and tight, his cock big and thick and pretty and enough to make Dean's mouth water. _Later_ , he thought, _later, later,_ and nudged his brother's legs open wide enough that he could kneel between them. He pulled Sam down the bed a little, roughly, to get his pretty ass up on top of his own thighs, left sticky slippery prints on the kid’s skin. Sam's breath caught, rattling, in his throat.

‘Dean,’ he whispered, half a heartbeat before his eyes fluttered shut as Dean slid one finger up inside of him, just to the middle knuckle, steady and slow, gripped his brother's hip with his free hand to keep him still. Sam was as hot and velvety and smooth inside as Dean remembered, and he hadn’t felt him this tight since the kid had been fifteen, spread out for the first time beneath him in an old farmhouse in Wyoming. His cock twitched, hard, at the thought.

‘Been awhile, Sammy?’ he murmured, giving a gentle pump, sinking all the way in, and Sam’s head tipped back on a sweet, quiet whine, lower lip caught between his teeth. Dean smoothed his free hand up his brother’s chest, let his fingers circle his throat, stroked a thumb over his Adam’s apple and along the underside of his jaw. ‘Tell me,’ Dean said.

‘Haven’t—’ Sam broke off on a choked, startled moan as Dean pushed another slick finger up inside him—much too soon not to burn, and Dean knew it, but the pleasure washing across his brother’s face told him all he needed to know about Sam’s opinion on the timing. ‘ _Haven’t_ ,’ Sam managed. ‘Not since—since we—in Iowa.’

Dean’s stomach clenched, hard, and his hand stilled between Sam’s legs. ‘Don’t lie to me,’ he said, softly.

Sam shook his head, violently, a mess of dark hair against the pillow. ‘Not,’ he insisted, and arched to get Dean’s fingers deeper again. ‘I’m— _fuck_ —not, Dean; I’ve just—just been with girls, at school.’ He looked up at him, eyes flickering with trust and grief and lust and rue. ‘Didn’t want anyone else inside of me.’

 _This isn’t,_  Dean remembered his brother telling him at the bar, even as something cracked open, red and wet and fucking _painful_ , just behind his ribs. He crooked his fingers to wrench a high, desperate sound from his brother's throat; Sam flailed for something to grab onto, got a fistful of sheets with one hand and latched onto Dean's amulet with the other.  _This isn't. I’m not._

He stretched and teased and worked him open until he had three fingers sliding in smooth and deep, until Sam’s hands were white-knuckled, head tossed back and bottom lip bitten red between his teeth. Dean made sure every third or fourth stroke to scrub the pads of his fingers just _there_ , just to watch Sam’s entire body jerk like a live wire in response, pretty pleas and curses spilling from his mouth. He’d almost forgotten how beautiful his little brother was like this, how thoroughly he let him in, how much he let Dean _see_.

_This isn’t. I’m not._

Sam was sweat-slick and shaking by the time Dean pulled his fingers out and leaned forward to catch his weight on his hands. The kid tugged him down on top of him, mouth hot and fierce and possessive, hands skimming now over Dean’s biceps, his shoulders, his ass. ‘Dean,’ he whispered, and Dean got a hand free to work between them, gripped his cock and shifted to nudge it against his brother’s soft slick hole. The sound Sam made at the feel of it was sweet as sin. ‘Dean, Jesus, _plea_ —’

He broke off on a moan as Dean rolled his hips and pushed; threw one hand back up to brace himself against the headboard, the other pressing warm and low into Dean’s back as Dean worked his way inside of him with shallow, insistent thrusts. ‘’S my boy,’ Dean whispered, mouthing along the edge of Sam’s jaw. Sam was still making the sweetest sounds, ragged and needy, Dean’s name mixed in with every other breath; Dean rocked in harder, deeper, and listened to him moan. ‘Yeah. ’S my Sammy.’

Sam _whimpered_ then, wrapping long legs around his waist, and on the next thrust Dean didn’t pause, just pushed in slow and steady until he slid all the way inside of him, until Sam’s eyes, lust-blown, were fluttering shut and Dean’s heart was stuttering hard in his chest and the world maybe went away for a minute, forgotten in the impossibly tight clench of heat around his cock and the warmth of Sam’s breath and the _feel_ of him, lean muscle and hot bare skin, intimate and familiar. There was an ache in Dean’s throat and stupid, helpless tears pricking hot and sudden at the backs of his eyes; he squeezed them shut, briefly, tipping forward to rest his forehead against his brother’s, breath coming quick and unsteady. He felt the weight of salty warmth in his lashes, felt Sam’s knuckles brush softly against his cheek, Sam’s thumb smooth across the damp skin beneath one eye.

‘Dean,’ he whispered, hoarse and sweet, and Dean opened his eyes to see Sam looking up at him like the kid had when he was sixteen, when Dean was the only thing in the world he knew how to see.

 _Missed you,_ Dean wanted to tell him, so badly, the words locked up in a tight hot knot in his throat. _Missed you, love you, mine_.

He pulled out of him instead, just a little, pushed back in, once, twice, rolling his hips so. fucking. slow, because Sam was too damn tight for anything more just yet. The sound Sam made was soft and strained, utterly addictive. Dropping his head to mouth at the curve of his brother’s throat, he could feel Sam’s pulse, strong and rabbit-quick, beating against his tongue as he rocked against him, inside of him, punching the breath out of both their lungs with every lengthening stroke. By the time he’d sucked bruises into the soft skin of the kid’s throat and licked the sweat from its hollow, Sam was panting, soft and sweet, his dark head thrown back against the pillow and the corded muscles in his neck stark beneath salt-slick skin. ‘So fuckin’ pretty,’ Dean whispered and then chuckled at the jolt of arousal he felt shock his brother’s slim body from shoulders to heels. ‘And so fuckin’ easy, baby brother,’ he murmured, and laughed as Sam leaned up to nip his bottom lip hard enough to sting.

‘Jerk,’ Sam panted, smiling. Dean pulled out far enough that just the head of his cock was still nestled thick and hot inside, then slid back in on a thrust that tore a startled moan from Sam’s throat. Dean grinned, bent to press his mouth against his brother’s ear.

‘Bitch,’ he promised, so softly, hips grinding in, and Sam let out another noise that was both a laugh and a moan and also what Dean was fairly certain was the most intoxicating thing he’d ever heard in his life. He tugged Sam’s hand free from the headboard, twined it with one of his, pinned it to the mattress just above Sam’s head; nosed at the soft skin behind Sam’s ear and licked a trail of sloppy kisses along his little brother’s jaw and into his mouth, warm and breathless and deep.  He was rocking in and out of him harder now, faster. Sam was still tight around his cock, but he’d loosened up enough to take Dean’s thrusts, which made him a slick silky easy ride as Dean started to fuck him in earnest, all of his weight behind the sharp snaps of his hips. Sam’s long legs slid up higher against Dean’s ribs, ankles locking behind his ass, cock trapped between their stomachs and sliding slick and hard and swollen across Dean’s skin, and God, he felt so stupidly, _stupidly_ good.

Time clenched, lurched, sprawled. The mattress springs squealed beneath them, the loose headboard smacking loud and rhythmic against the wall. Dean was aware, dimly, that from the other side was coming an irritated sort of banging and someone shouting something that sounded like _keep it the hell down_ , but he paid it no attention, because he had his little brother spread open beneath him, warm and pliant and _his_ , and the world could have set itself on fucking fire at the moment and he’d scarcely have noticed the heat. A soft litany of _unh-unh-unh_ was spilling helplessly now from Sam’s pretty mouth in time with his thrusts, the noises between them loud and wet and filthy, and his skin was three sizes too small for him and his bones were marrowed in heat and sweet _Christ_ he needed to come.

‘D-Dean.’ Sam’s voice was a high, breathless whine. ‘Dean, I can’t—I’m gonna—’

‘Yeah,’ he gasped, feeling his brother’s long legs starting to shake. ‘Yeah, c’mon, Sammy.’ Sam was as flushed as if he’d been running in desert heat, muscle tremors bleeding from his legs to his hips to his spine until his whole body was trembling, something open and desperate in his face. Dean bit at his mouth, his jaw, licking drops of his own sweat from Sam’s skin; pleasure was already starting to spark white up his spine, a match strike that promised a forest fire. ‘’S it. C’mon. Give it up, baby. Give it up for me.’ He shifted his weight to snake his free hand between them, wrapped it tight around Sam’s cock and gave one rough, encouraging pull as he thrust hard and deep and _perfect_ , and Sam was gone, his ass squeezing vice-tight around Dean’s cock as his eyelids fluttered shut and his muscles stiffened; and the choked-off, blissed-out _De_ strangling in his throat as he came all over both their stomachs pushed Dean over the edge straight after his little brother: two more hard thrusts, and then his hips locked up and he was coming, creamy and deep, and the only thing he could feel beyond it was Sam.

He didn’t mean to collapse on his brother. But by the time he blinked the sparks from his vision and got his breath back under control, that was where he found himself, all the same, face pressed into the pillow beside Sam’s head, body sprawled loose and lazy on top of him and probably as heavy as a few bags of wet cement, but Dean couldn’t get his brain working properly enough yet to coordinate the whole moving process. Sam didn’t seem to mind. Utterly relaxed beneath him, one leg still crooked around his hip, his little brother had one hand still tangled with Dean’s above his head and was letting the other drift up and down his back, over his shoulders, along his sides, fingers curling possessively, tenderly, around the sharp edges of his hips, the soft places between his ribs. The sweetness of it wrapped him for a long a moment in a cloud of lazy warmth, and he was just thinking, idle and content, of how cuddly Sam was likely to be in the car the next morning when reality came crashing back in around him, and the pain of it twisted up sharp and wet and sudden in his chest.

_This isn’t. I’m not._

Sam wasn’t gonna be in the car with him in the morning.

It was like being doused with a bucket of ice water, that recollection, and Sam’s hands on him were suddenly too much. The gentleness in them was too much. Sam was touching him like he loved him, like he _knew_ him, to the bone, in a way no one else on the planet did, ever had, ever would, but it didn’t matter, Jesus fuck did it not matter, because Dean wasn’t enough to keep him. He knew that, had _known_ that, ever since his little brother had left him in the middle of a street in Iowa, and if he’d been stupid enough to let himself forget it for a little while, well—there was no use bitching about the pain when he’d given himself the wound.

He shifted his hips and rolled abruptly off his little brother, swung his legs over the side of the bed and sat up, and that hurt, too, pulling away from Sam’s warmth instead of curling up into it, into a tangle of arms and legs and breath and heartbeat and the tickling silk of Sam’s hair. He felt cold. He forced himself to breathe past the ache in his throat, struggled to find his walls, to re-fucking- _build_ his walls, because Sam had knocked them right down to rubble ( _didn’t want anyone else inside of me didn’t want anyone else didn’t want_ ), and he needed—

One of Sam’s stupidly (wonderfully) big hands settled on his hip, hesitant and warm, thumb stroking over the bone. ‘Dean?’ he asked, and Christ on a _crutch_ , he sounded so freakin’ young. ‘Are—Dean, did I—’

Dean shook his head, throat too tight to speak, squeezed his brother’s hand once, hard. Went into the bathroom on legs that were still unsteady. Didn’t bother with the light. He’d washed his hands and gotten a washcloth under the tap when he heard the creak of cheap linoleum behind him, and a heartbeat later he had nearly six and a half feet of solid warmth wrapping itself tentatively around him—Sam’s chest and lean stomach firm against his back, chin hooking over his shoulder, arms sliding around his ribs. ‘Dean,’ his brother said, softly. His voice was just this side of vulnerable.

There were a dozen different things Dean wanted to say ( _say, promise, beg, plead for_ ), but he didn’t know how to find the words, wasn’t even certain there even were any to be found. He cleared his throat, managed a credible imitation of his usual voice as he turned on the tap. ‘You get jizz on my ass and you are scrubbin’ it off.’

He felt the pull of Sam’s smooth cheek against his stubble as his little brother smiled. ‘Already used your tee shirt to clean up,’ he murmured.

‘Bitch.’

‘Jerk,’ he whispered, voice low and warm, the sound of which Dean was fairly certain should not be _legal_ , Jesus, and then he tugged the wet washcloth out of Dean’s hand, started to wipe Dean’s stomach gently, thoroughly clean, one arm still warm around his ribs, holding him close, holding him still. Dean swallowed, audibly, as Sam slid a hand between his legs, and after a moment he let his head tip back against his brother’s shoulder, because it was really fucking dark in the bathroom, and things like this didn’t . . . they didn’t count, when both of them could scarcely see. Sam turned his head a little to brush his lips across Dean’s cheekbone as he finished. He brought a hand up to catch Dean beneath the chin, tilted Dean’s head so that he could get at his mouth, and Dean wasn’t certain how long they stood there kissing in the dark, Sam still cupping his soft cock tenderly in one big hand, the heat from his fingers and palm bleeding through the warm wet of the washcloth around him, but however long it was, Dean’s heart was aching by the end of it.

_This isn’t. I’m not._

Sam sighed, softly, into his mouth.

‘Tired now,’ he murmured, bumping their noses together, an old sign of affection from when they were children; Dean snorted, softly, and swallowed against the hot knot in his throat. _I love you_ , he wanted to say. _I love you; don’t leave. Don’t leave me._

‘Locks and salt,’ he managed instead, taking the washcloth back from his brother and tossing it into the tub. Sam gripped his hips, briefly, brushed a kiss into the crook of his neck, and then went to check the door and window and salt lines. Dean followed him out a minute later, flopped down onto their comfortably messy bed, let his brother curl into his side like he always had when the kid crawled in with him a moment later: head tucked to Dean’s chest, long legs tangled up with his, one arm wrapped warm and tight around his ribs. He tugged up the covers around them both, felt Sam relax in the circle of his arm, a long sigh bleeding out of him as he tucked his nose against Dean’s collarbone and mouthed gently at the soft skin there. ‘Dean,’ he murmured, warm and content.

They said nothing else. Sam was asleep a handful of heartbeats later, and Dean felt himself drifting off not long after, lulled by his little brother’s familiar warmth and weight, by the sound of the wind, by the rumble of passing trucks outside on the snowy highway. It was barely eight o’clock, but the sex had left him sleepy, and right now everything around him—Sam asleep in his arms, the scent of motel detergent and scratchy motel sheets, the sound of the ice machine in the hall—was singing _safe_ and _familiar_ and _home_. Sliding his free hand up behind his head to check that he had a knife and gun beneath his pillow, he buried his nose and mouth in the mess of Sam’s hair, breathed him in, and followed him into sleep.

***

Dean half-woke, near midnight, to find Sam standing alone at the window, looking out at the road. He had a blanket wrapped around him; the red glow of the heater was dead, and it was cold enough in their room that his brother’s breath was frosting in the dark.

‘Sammy.’ Dean’s voice was rough with sleep. Sam turned his head to look at him, the dim light from the parking lot sliding across his skin. _I love you_ , Dean thought, again. _Don’t leave. Don’t leave me._ He held out an arm. ‘Come back to bed,’ he said, and Sam let the blanket slither to the floor and did.

***

The hotel clock read 3:41 when Dean woke again, four minutes before his alarm. The heat had, thank Christ, kicked back on sometime in the night, and their room was warm and dim and quiet. Sam was sound asleep, burrowed in close against Dean’s side; Dean reached for his phone, carefully, with his free hand, canceled the alarm before it could sound and wake his brother. Sam shifted against him a little anyway, tightening an arm around his ribs, hooking a long leg over his, and murmured something on a soft sighing breath that Dean couldn’t understand. He let a hand drift up to settle in his hair, rubbed softly at Sam’s scalp with his thumb. Wondered, idly, what kind of deal he’d have to make, what kind of price he’d have to pay, to stay right here for the rest of his life, Sam warm and safe beside him.                  

It was nearly four by the time he forced himself to disentangle himself from his sleeping, clingy little brother and get up out of bed. He pulled his clothes and boots on in the dark. And if he let himself pretend for a long moment that this was just any one of the thousand mornings he’d gotten dressed while his brother slept, that within half an hour the both of them would be in the car and on the highway, their father up ahead of them in his truck, Sam bitching about the radio or asleep again against his shoulder or nattering on about how their coffee wasn’t free-trade or organic or made out of fairy dust or some shit, well—no one had to know about that but him. 

‘Dean?’

He didn’t look up from where he was tying his boots. ‘Gotta go check on the ice-walkers’ nest at sunrise,’ he said, quietly. ‘Take me a couple hours. Go back to sleep, Sammy. Room’s paid for ‘til noon.’

There was a rustle of covers, and then the bedside lamp went on—flickery and weak, but bright enough for Dean to see his brother’s sweet face, bright enough for him to see the marks he’d left on Sam’s skin, a long line of bruises down his throat and along his collarbone that made Dean want to put his mouth on him all over again.

‘You coming back?’ Sam asked, softly, and that was, Dean decided, possibly the most unfair question ever asked in the history of creation, because between the two of them, he had never been the one who’d done the leaving.

‘Yeah,’ he said, simply. ‘You gonna be here?’

Sam’s breath hitched, softly. ‘Dean—’

He felt his mouth curve to a humorless smile, reached for his jacket, pulled it on like armor. ‘Yeah, ‘s what I thought.’

‘No, I . . .’ Sam pushed his hands back through his sleep-tousled hair, then swung his legs over the side of the bed, sat up. He looked at Dean with something terrified and stubborn and pleading in his eyes. ‘Dean. Come with me.’

Dean stared at him, so suddenly off-balance it was almost funny. ‘What?’

He fished his pants off the floor, pulled them on up over his bare hips. ‘Come back with me to Stanford.’ His voice was steady; his hands weren’t. Dean could see them shaking, ever so slightly, as he stood. ‘Go check out the nest if you have to. I can . . . I can come with you, if you want, and then we can just—it’s twelve hundred miles to Palo Alto; it’s nothing. We’ll be there before midnight.’ His mouth quirked, small and sweet. ‘I won’t even bitch about the music, okay? I promise.  Just . . . Dean, I’ve missed you so fucking much that I can’t even—please. Please just come back with me.’

It took Dean two tries to find his voice. Then, finally: ‘Sam, why in the hell would you want me at Stanford?’

‘. . . I’ve always wanted you at Stanford.’

He snorted out a sharp, disbelieving laugh. ‘Yeah. Okay. Course you have. ‘S why we’ve had all those long, meaningful chats on the phone this year, right?’

‘Dean—

‘And when you left? ‘M sure that’s why I remember you havin’ some particular things to say about bein’ tired of your family of freaks —’ 

‘Dean, I wasn’t—I never meant for—’ Sam ran a hand back through his messy hair again, frustrated, squeezed his eyes shut for a long moment.  ‘I fucked up, okay?’ he admitted, in a small voice. ‘I fucked all of this up, and I didn’t _mean_ to; I just . . . I got so angry with Dad, and I didn’t—I didn’t mean to take it out on you, the night I left.  I didn’t mean anything I said to you, Dean, and I am so, so sorry I let you think I did.’ He took a step closer to him, slim and beautiful and earnest and—and _Sam_. ‘I wanted you to come with me,’ he said, softly. ‘Always thought you _would_ come with me, and that’s why I—’ He was flushing, just a little, along the high planes of his cheekbones and the tips of his ears. ‘That’s why I chose Stanford, okay? ‘Cause you’ve been bitching about New England winters since I was, like, ten, and I wanted . . . I wanted us to be somewhere you’d be happy.’

It was a long moment before Dean could force anything past the hot, sudden ache in his throat, and even then it was only, ‘Sammy.’

Sam shrugged, wrapped his arms around his bare ribs, looked briefly down at his toes. ‘You’ve always loved California. And Stanford has couples housing, even for undergrads, and nowhere else had that kind of . . . it’s what I applied for on my residence stuff, once I got my scholarship.’ He tried for a smile as he looked back up, failed rather spectacularly. ‘They were kinda pissed when I showed up alone.’

‘The hell did you never—’ He looked away for a moment, unclear on whether the tears suddenly stinging at his eyes were thanks to grief or regret or anger. _I wanted us to be somewhere you’d be happy_. ‘Sam, for fuck’s sake, did it ever occur to you to, I don’t know, _ask_ me about any of this?’ he demanded, chest aching. ‘While you were makin’ grand plans for our future and all?’

‘Asking now,’ Sam said, pleadingly, taking a single step toward him, as though he were worried Dean would startle and run. ‘Dean, I told you; I—I know I fucked everything up. I know that, okay, but . . .’ He swallowed. ‘We can still fix it, right? We . . . just come with me. Please. You love California; you’ve always loved California; and you’d . . . you could . . .’

Dean scrubbed a hand across his eyes and looked back at him, a small, wry smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. ‘I could what?’ he asked, almost gently. ‘You got a sudden rash of monsters that need killin’ on campus, kiddo? ‘Cause I ain’t gonna be good for much el—’

‘Don’t.’ Sam’s voice was sudden and sharp. ‘Damn it, don’t—don’t say that. You’re good at _everything you do_. You’re gonna be good at anything you ever do. And I don’t care if the last book you read was . . .freakin’  Green Eggs and Ham, Dean; you’re still one of the smartest people I know. Why do you never _see_ that?’

Dean looked at him for a moment, startled, then shook his head. ‘Sammy—’

‘You’ve wanted to be a mechanic since you were twelve, man. You’ve been _good_ enough to be a mechanic since you were twelve, and there are two dozen garages just in Palo Alto; you could—we could—’

‘Sam—’

‘S not like we need a lot of space, you know?’ There was something suddenly and impossibly young, impossibly hopeful, in his face: a little boy begging for a puppy, for an ice cream, for the moon. ‘We can just—we can find a place just for this next semester, and then I can change my housing request for the fall to—’

‘And what about the thing that killed Mom?’ Dean interrupted. ‘’M I supposed to just forget all about that? And the rest of the supernatural shit that we _hunt,_ Sam?’

‘You’re not supposed to forget about _me_!’

Dean wasn’t entirely aware he was even moving until he felt Sam’s sleep-warm skin beneath his hands; he had enough presence of mind left to clap a hand around the back of his brother’s head before he slammed him back into the wall with an arm across his collarbone, but it was a near thing, all the same. ‘Say that again.’

‘Dean—’

‘I called you every day for three weeks after you left, Sam,’ he continued, tightly. ‘You left me in the middle of a _fucking road in Iowa_ and I called you for three. weeks. And then I called you every week after that for fucking _months_ , and you never picked up the phone. Forget about you? I’ve never forgotten about you a day in your _life_ , you ungrateful little—’

‘Dean, Dean, I’m sorry, please; I didn’t—I _know_ that, please.’ Sam’s voice was suddenly all tangled up with tears, hands warm where they gripped the arm Dean had pinned across his chest. ‘Please. I didn’t mean that. I just—I’m sorry.’ His face was wet. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I keep saying stupid shit I don’t—’ He squeezed his eyes shut, miserable. ‘Dean.’

‘Shit,’ Dean muttered, and let his arm drop. ‘Sammy, I didn’t—’

‘It’s just that I missed you,’ he whispered, sounding all of eight years old, and the way he knuckled briefly at one wet eye didn’t help. ‘And I didn’t know how to tell you how sorry I was for everything I’d said, and so I couldn’t answer the—Dean, I heard your voice just on the goddamned voicemail and I was halfway to packing, and I knew if I’d talked to you I would’ve . . . I would’ve come back, I would still come back, and I can’t _do_ that, okay?’ He pushed a hand back through his hair again. ‘I can’t live like this. Crap motel rooms and . . . and freakin’ ice walkers at sunrise and never knowing where the hell we’re gonna sleep; I _can’t_. So you gotta . . . you gotta come with me.’ His mouth was trembling; instinct, bred bone-deep, had Dean reaching up to thumb another tear from his face as it slipped past his lashes. ‘Please. Just . . . just come.’ He plucked at the hem of Dean’s jacket like the little kid Dean remembered, insistent and bossy and everything in the world he loved. ‘Dean, just _come_.’

‘And leave Dad?’ he asked, quietly.

Sam said nothing for a long moment. Then: ‘Dean, Dad left us a long time ago.’

He shook his head. ‘I’m not listenin’ to this shit again.’

‘I—’

‘No.’ He gripped his brother’s face between his hands. ‘You come home,’ he said, quietly, fiercely. ‘You _come home_ to me, Sam, and you and me and Dad finish this thing, and then I will go with you anywhere you wanna go, little brother. Stanford. Disney World. Freakin’ Mexico, if you feel like it, okay? I’ll build you a house on the beach and make you girly margaritas twice a day if you want me to. But findin’ the son of a bitch that killed Mom comes first.’ His fingers tightened, gently, desperately, trying to make him understand, to make him _see_. ‘Sammy, that has gotta come first.’

Sam said nothing. His lashes were wet, eyes held wide against the rest of the tears he was refusing to let fall; Dean wanted to wrap him up in his arms, wanted to tumble him back into their messy bed, knew he couldn’t, felt the inevitability of what was about to happen crashing down like a tidal wave inside of him. The ties between them were stretching, fraying, _snapping_ , the recoil of each whipping separate lines of bright pain across his heart.

Sam shook his head, once, sharply, breath hitching hard in his chest.

Dean smoothed his thumbs over his brother’s cheekbones, helplessly. His stomach was clenching, hard and cold, and his chest fucking _ached_ , but his hands stayed steady, even though he was fairly certain that the world was ending, here in a crap motel room in Colorado, here between them, in the dark. He took half a second more to look at his little brother, to make a memory of the sharp beautiful planes of his face and the soft sweep of his lashes and the warmth of Sam’s smooth skin beneath his own hands, and then he forced himself to turn, to pick up his keys from the table, to _move_. He didn’t look back. It was bitterly cold outside, and the click of the door behind him seemed as loud as a gunshot in the dark. Heading blindly across the lot toward the Impala, Dean wondered if it hurt this much to die. 

***

The room was empty when Dean returned.

He’d known it would be.

He cried all the same.

***

It was almost nine by the time Dean checked himself out and tossed his duffel in the trunk, climbed back into the car and turned on the heat. He sat for a moment, forehead resting against the wheel, then dug his phone out of his pocket and called his father. His call went, unsurprisingly, to voice mail. ‘Hey, Dad,’ he said, wearily. ‘S me. Nest is clear. I’m still breathin’. So, you know. Things are awesome. Call if you need me, all right? Or if you just, y’know, whatever. Either phone. And hey, it’s, uh—it’s Thanksgiving on Thursday, so lemme know if you wrap up early or something, okay?’ He paused a moment before he ended the call, then tried both of his father’s other numbers. John picked up at neither one of them, and it wasn’t until he hit the ‘end’ button for the third time and sat looking out quietly into the white of a Colorado winter that Dean realized how very desperately he had wanted to talk to the man. Because although his car had meant home and comfort and safety for almost as long as he could remember, she felt impossibly empty this morning, and the rattle of Legos in her vents _hurt_.

He looked over at the highway, at the trucks rumbling past, salt and sand flying from beneath their tires. Pulled in a careful breath against the pain in his chest. Didn’t die. Pulled in another. Forced himself to think of something other than the hazel smoke of his brother’s eyes, the warmth of his mouth. Yesterday morning he’d caught wind of a possible haunting in Rathdrum—odd death, old house, small town. Seemed as good a place as any, really. He’d need to head a few hundred miles west, and then north, and north, and north, nearly a thousand miles north, and maybe the cold would freeze this fucking grief from the marrow of his bones.

He put the car into gear, turned on the radio to find the Stones singing of dreaming a sin and a lie as he eased out of the snowy lot and onto the highway. The plows had already been through, and the road was in good shape; if it stayed that way, he’d be up in Idaho in sixteen hours, maybe a little more. He’d find a place to crash; find the ghost. Find another job. Keep driving.

Dean turned the music up. Mick Jagger’s voice throbbed, lonely and wild. He cracked the window a little, despite the cold, just to hear the comforting _rush_ and _thrum_ of the wind and the road, and headed west on 70, into the cold morning light.


End file.
